


With All Their Lives Lived In Ours

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for the season six and season eight finales. Implied canon character deaths. </p>
<p>
  <i>He can’t begin to fathom how he’s ended up here…</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	With All Their Lives Lived In Ours

He can’t begin to fathom how he’s ended up here, slumped to sideways in a hard-backed hospital chair that is uncomfortable but solid beneath his weight. A soundtrack of beeps from machinery that matches his heartbeat, thump for unsettled thump, the only sound in the room save for the muffled inhale, exhale, inhale of air.

He should go.

He already knows that he won’t.

 

 

He’s heard rumours of a pericardiocentesis performed using plastic tubing fashioned into a surgical implement. If his mind stalls at gauze pressed urgently between clenched teeth, spilled blood and agony, then the moment is only fleeting.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. Shuts his eyes and silently reels off baseball players until the memories fade and he can breathe around all that’s left.

(All that’s left are ghosts.  
Very little else…)

 

 

He sleeps; pretends that he doesn’t, wakes with a vicious startle every time his chin drops below horizontal. The oxygen mask has been replaced by a nasal cannula, a new bag of fluids hung sometime between then and now. 

Blinking against the harsh fluorescence, he forces himself upright onto legs that scream their protest; walks to the other side of the room for no real reason beyond the sudden need to _move_.

He could head for the door, he thinks. Step out into the hall and ride the elevator to the ground-floor one more time. Maybe collect the pieces of him still trapped between the metal grooves on the way; after all it wasn’t just blood he lost that day.

But he knows that if he starts, he won’t be able to stop. And running is no longer a viable option.

At least, not today. 

(Maybe not ever.)

 

 

He leans his forehead against the white-washed plasterboard of the wall; bounces his skull lightly against the solid surface in an attempt to slow everything down.

He should go find Meredith. Or Cristina. Or Callie.

He should go do any number of things besides stand still on the spot and slowly fall to pieces.

 

 

“Karev…”

The voice, little more than a whisper, grates across nerve endings that are beyond cotton fabric-frayed. He longs to clamp his hands over his ears and scream to drown out the echo of his name; doesn’t, but only just.

“Sloan.” He thinks his version of speaking is not much better. Lack of sleep and the ferocious battling of his own re-awakened demons leaving him hollowed out. He is too empty to pretend to be anything else.

“ _Alex._ ” Pleading this time for a reality he can’t begin to offer. 

 

 

He sinks back into the abandoned hospital chair instead; scrubs his hands across his face violently, a fruitless bid to stifle the screaming inside his head. 

(Bullet holes and brain matter. Eyes that no longer blink back.  
Doesn’t it always come down to that…)

Says; “I’m so sorry…”


End file.
